Since March 2009

My Fashion Philosophy

Do you have some fashion philosophies? Some guidelines or trends by which you buy/make clothes? I do, and I share mine below in summary of an overarching philosophy, elaborating on each element later.

If you don’t have some fashion philosophies, you might consider formulating some. You can develop it by thought, or start by analyzing what you have in your closet, and deciding what you might like to change. What you wear does make an impression and does form some portion of your identity. Not having some conscious fashion philosophies is a bit like not having an identity for which you have some say in. Are you the type to run around without an identity you give yourself? :-)

If you do have some fashion philosophies, or will be getting some, please do share. You can link to this post or leave a comment.

Being a small stature guy, I’m a bit at the mercy of the rather limited and boring selection out there. However, I’ve been taking up sewing to be able to make clothes just the way I like them, so I’m writing this from a fashion design perspective, not a past garment purchase analysis perspective. My past garment purchase fashion philosophy is boring!

Many people will have to determine their fashion philosophies from a closet analysis approach, with intent to change some things for the future. An example might be to stop buying clothes that are blue. For a long stretch, blue was the only guy clothes I could find that I liked and would be willing to pay their prices. So I banned blue from my clothing purchases! The blue ban is still on, and will only be lifted after I replace enough of it with new garments. :-)

Overarching fashion philosophy

At a high level, my fashion design philosophy is if I were caught on security camera, there’d be no trouble describing me.

That probably sounds ridiculous! But after some serious thinking, that was how I boiled down the elements of my design tendencies, and how they combined. If you were going to do this exercise, I suggest you get the overarching philosophy at the end, after you know all the elements and how they interact.

So what does it mean, exactly, that if my fashion were caught on security camera, that there’d be no trouble describing me? Well, it means each garments will have these most, if not all, of these features:

If you want, you can think about how each helps my fashion be easily identifiable and describable if caught on even a bad and staticky security camera. I will elaborate on these elements in future posts beyond that, to the fashion themselves, and link them back here. You can come back here to see them hopefully in a month, or just follow this blog. I will also do a grading for garments I have produced so far, with full, half or zero points for each element and an overall letter grade. How’s that for serious fashion self-critiquing? :-)